Snohomish County Has Sound Transit's Regional Rail Spine Top of Mind

Last week on a rain-soaked Tuesday, Snohomish County transit advocates gathered at Everett Station to rally for the Everett Link light rail extension project, which they framed as affordable to build and able to proceed on its 2041 grand opening timeline. An axe-wielding lumberjack mural leered over the proceedings in the Weyerhaeuser Room, where Snohomish County Executive Dave Somers and Everett Mayor Cassie Franklin pitched the case for putting "finishing the spine" to Everett and Tacoma before other regional rail projects.

The agency will be realigning project schedules later this spring in the face of a $34.5 billion long-term budget gap to complete and operate the 116-mile light rail network promised to voters in the 2016 Sound Transit 3 (ST3) ballot measure. Repeating some variation of the phrase "finish the spine" more than a dozen times during the event, Somers and Franklin made it very clear where their priorities lie.

Last month, Sound Transit published three systemwide cost-cutting scenarios that all involved deferring stations in Ballard and Interbay, moving that segment from a projected opening date of 2039 to an unspecified question mark in light of the severe budget overruns in the Seattle ST3 segments.

Somers, who chairs the Sound Transit Board and has been stewarding the scenarios through his Executive Committee, argued the agency faces no other immediate path forward with Ballard Link. But he did leave the door open to some solutions down the road, including running another ballot measure in the North King subarea, which includes Seattle, Shoreline, and Lake Forest Park. Some advocates have also pitched a ballot measure that would encompass all three King County subareas but exclude Pierce and Snohomish Counties.

https://www.theurbanist.org/snohomish-county-rail-spine-top-of-mind/